God and the King

by Marjorie Bowen

This peace was an honourable close to an honourable conflict. Louis recognised William as King of England, and granted most of the terms desired by the allies, not one of whom complained that they had been forgotten or slighted by the King in the framing of the articles. The delay of Spain and the Emperor to sign, despite William's entreaties, had resulted in the fall of Barcelona and Louis' consequent rise of terms, the principal of which was the retention of Strassburg—a severe blow to Austria. But, on the whole, the peace was favourable to the coalition, and in England and Holland at least was received with unbounded rejoicing. William's return from the Continent was the signal for a display of loyalty as enthusiastic as that which had greeted the exiled Charles in '66.

William, to whose diplomacy the peace was owing, as the war had been owing to his indomitable energy, was at the very zenith of his reputation at home and abroad. He avoided the pageants, processions, triumphal arches, and general laudations, both from a natural modesty and a cynical perception of their hollowness, which was but too well justified, for the first act of the Parliament was to inflict cruel mortification on him by disbanding, at the instance of the Tory agitator, Robert Harley, the army which had done such magnificent service. Sunderland's utmost arts could only retain ten thousand men, including the King's beloved Dutch Guards.

This action was, to William, the worst of policy, besides a personal slight that he could not but feel that he had ill deserved. The peace was to him but an armed truce before the inevitable struggle for the Spanish possessions, and the part that he was to play in that struggle was considerably weakened by the disbanding of the troops which made England, save for her Navy, powerless again in Europe.

The English Parliament, profoundly ignorant of continental affairs, and not in the least understanding the spacious policy of the King, thought only of the power a standing army put in the hands of the Crown, and were not to be moved from their resolve.

William, driven back, as he had so often been, on his own innate statesmanship, endeavoured to accomplish by wit what he was now powerless to accomplish by arms, and secretly framed with Louis the Partition Treaty, by which the vast dominions of the imbecile and dying King of Spain were to be divided between Louis' grandson Phillippe d'Anjou, and William's candidate, the infant son of the Elector of Bavaria, who derived his claim through his dead mother, Maria Antonia.

The King had disdained to consult the English ministers until he had completed this treaty, and then only curtly demanded the necessary signatures; from the nation it was a profound secret.

Sunderland disapproved of this daring policy of the King's. He thought that many of the domestic troubles of the reign might have been avoided if William had been less resolute to keep foreign affairs entirely in his own hands, but the King's well-founded distrust of the levity, treachery, and ignorance of the English, and their personal malice towards him as a foreigner, could not be moved by the most specious of Sunderland's arguments. William refused to put any faith in the crowds who shouted after his coach, in the ringing and the toasts, in the bales of loyal addresses that were laid daily at his feet. He knew perfectly well that at bottom he was neither understood nor liked, and that all this rejoicing was not for the King, but because a peace, pleasing to English pride, had been signed; because bank stock had risen from sixty to ninety, paper money to par, the guinea from eighteen shillings to twenty-one; because the new milled coins were in every hand and an era of prosperity was following the crisis of '96.

Sunderland watched all these things with some misgiving. Under all his honours and greatness was a lurking uneasiness. He began to lose his courage at being so hated; hints of impeachment had risen in the House more than once; he could scarcely show his face abroad without a burst of popular fury. In the opinion of the people he should not have been intrusted with one of the highest offices under the Crown, but have been starving in exile, or dead, long since in the Tower, as his colleague under James—Lord Jefferies. The ministers, too, could ill disguise their dislike of him. He had befriended the Whigs, and they owed him a cold allegiance, but he had no real supporter save the King, whose will alone kept him where he was; and he had more enemies than he could count, including Portland, who hated him exceedingly.

When the King had created Joost van Keppel Earl of Albemarle, Portland had offered to resign his post and retire, and only by the intercession of M. de Vaudemont and the passionate entreaties of his one flatterer, the King, had he been induced to stay another year, which was employed in the gorgeous embassy to France from which he had just returned, to find Sunderland all-powerful and Albemarle in full possession of the King's confidence.

Sunderland saw that his temper was strained to the utmost, and that affairs in the King's household must soon reach a crisis. Although he used Albemarle as a balance against a man who hated him, Sunderland had no ill-will towards Portland, and wished to spare the King the agony he knew he would feel on the earl's retirement. He would have wished Shrewsbury to stay too—the King liked the young duke—but here, as in Portland's case, Sunderland felt matters had gone too far.